Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, are we going to have a dialog or is the gentleman going to give a speech? If the gentleman is going to give a speech, I want the gentleman to do it on his time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I am relieved.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, does that mean if we have got these panels that have these proclivities, the next step is to have three panels so we have to have nine judges now?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] to the bill. I obviously oppose this bill. The amendment would make it slightly better, probably not well enough for me to vote for it even if it passes because I just think this is a bad idea, and I think the American public and my colleagues need to understand why this is a bad idea and why we have not done this in more circumstances. I mean if it was a wonderful idea, why is the only case in which one gets a three-judge panel is in voting rights cases? Why do we not apply it to all cases? If judges are whimsical, as the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary indicated, and they are; I mean I practiced law for 22 years, I know judges are whimsical. But that does not mean that this is a good idea. There is a reason that we have not done this in other areas of the law. You should know that we had this process in the Federal law from 1948 to 1976. We repealed this process in 1976. The reason we repealed it was that the bench, the Federal judiciary, lawyers, and the people concluded, and this is from a report that was filed, that ``This was the single worst feature in the Federal judicial system.'' Now, as if we have forgotten this history, we are going to go back and reinstitute the same thing again. Well, if we do it for this line of cases and it is a good idea, where are we going to draw the line? We are going to get on this slippery slope, and next week we are going to want it for, I guess, traffic offenses or legislative things that are subject to judicial attack. Or, hey, certainly if the Congress of the United States passes a law, should it not require three judges to declare it unconstitutional, as opposed to just one judge, even though we can appeal it up through the process and go through the normal routine? This is a bad idea. This is a bad idea. This is not about having an adjudication in a reasonable way, as the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary has said. If this were reasonable and this were the only way to get a reasonable adjudication or deal with adjudications in a reasonable way, then we would be doing it for all of the cases. There is a reason that we have not adopted this process for other cases. It is costly to have three judges come in and decide something that one judge, who is open to an appeal if he is wrong, can decide. It is costly. Mr. Chairman, under this proposal the judges will not be sitting in the same city. They will be coming from different parts of the state. You have got to put them up overnight. You have got to pay their expenses. They have got to have their law clerks with them. You have got to pay their expenses. And at a time when my Republican colleagues are beating us up over limiting expenditures at the Federal level, they are coming in here and proposing something that is absolutely nonsensical, just to do a favor to the Republican Member from California. That is what this is all about. That is why 99 percent of the people who have debated on this side of the aisle on this issue have been from California. They do not like the results that the judge gave them, two judges, I might add, not one, in this proposition case in California, so they want to change the process, a process which has worked for America for years and years and years. This is not about process. This is about the result that they do not like.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time, since the gentleman from California does not want to engage in a dialog; the gentleman wants to make a speech.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to yield to the gentleman at the end of my presentation. Mr. Chairman, the third point I want to address is this notion that we ought to, basically, dictate to States that they have referenda in their States, rather than deciding their State's policies through the regular legislative process. If we say we are going to provide a three-judge panel if they have a referendum, but we are not going to provide a three-judge panel if the State legislature meets and passes a law that is constitutionally suspect, then all we have done is we are going to give the States that have a preference for referenda some kind of deference. That ought not to be the case. There are States who do not submit issues of this kind, or any other kind, to State referenda. In North Carolina, we seldom have a statewide referendum on any issue. That is what we elect State representatives for, to go and make public policy, and we ought not give a referendum State any greater deference than we give the regular legislative body. Finally, Mr. Chairman, and then I will be happy to yield to the gentleman, and I will be happy to engage in whatever dialog the gentleman wants, and I hope the gentleman will yield to me and we can engage in it on his time. Mr. Chairman, let me talk to my colleagues about the historical background for having a three-judge panel in voting rights cases. The Voting Rights Act was adopted in 1965, in the midst of overt racial discrimination in the South. It applies, primarily, to southern States. All of the judges in the South were from the South. The process that was set up was to try to get those racial biases out of the process by bringing more people to bear on it. There was a historical record of why it was necessary. Mr. Chairman, there is no record of anybody discriminating against the State of California. Nobody has come in here and said that the judges have discriminated against the State of California. The State court in California also held unconstitutional this proposition that you are concerned about the result of. The Federal court held it unconstitutional, and the State court held it unconstitutional. So, are we asking for a three-judge panel in the State courts of California also? Are we accusing the State courts of discriminating against California? There was a factual basis for a three-judge panel in voting rights cases. There is simply not that factual basis in this case.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, regular order. I will be happy to yield to the gentleman at the end of my presentation. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman from California [Mr. Dreier] wants to play this game, I am going to do it to him when the gentleman gets up.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, they can pass around that right if they want, but I am not yielding at this time. I will be happy to yield if I have time left. We do not have the resources. We are dealing with scarce resources right now. The Republicans tell us every day we have scarce resources and here we come. We do not like the result so we will change the process. Instead of using one judge, we are going to use three judges. Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to go back to the point the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] made. We should have three biases in a situation where a referendum has been held rather than one bias. I did not realize that our Federal Judiciary consisted of any biases. We go through a rigorous process of trying to select the best judges we can select, and we have a very intense process of appeals to the court of appeals, to the Supreme Court of the United States. There are always appeals in the process if we do not like the process or bias of that particular judge. So this notion that we ought to bring three biases to bear on a referendum issue rather than the bias of one judge, I hope we do not bring any biases to bear. If they are looking at the Constitution and interpreting the Constitution in the way that the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated the Constitution ought to be interpreted, and in the way that we know is correct, then it ought not be a question of whether there are any biases or not.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman please stop interrupting me? I will yield at the end of my presentation.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I will not yield. The other side has plenty of time over there. I will be happy to yield after I get through making the points I want. I do not have the right to ask for three highway patrolmen to come out on the street and decide whether it was proper for me to get a speeding ticket just because I do not like the result. Mr. Chairman, what the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] is proposing is tantamount to the same thing. We do not have the resources to bring to bear on the traffic ticket that I get out there.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time and being generous with her time, and I will try not to use the entire time but I think this is an important issue. I rise in opposition to the bill which is under debate at this time. The gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] apparently thinks that because he does not like the result that a court gave him changing the process by which the court got to that result is the appropriate thing to do. I will submit to the gentleman that, first of all, I never, ever got a spanking when I was growing up that I liked the result of, but I never had the opportunity to go back and say, I want three mothers or fathers to make this decision about whether I get a spanking or not just because I did not like the result. Mr. Chairman, I do not like the result when I get stopped by a highway patrolman out on the highway and get a traffic ticket.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thought it might be helpful for the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Buyer] to understand the historical and factual background in which the three-judge panel for voting rights cases was adopted initially. If the gentleman is interested in that, I would be happy to tell him. It had nothing to do with this kind of situation.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, this was the judge's decision based on the Constitution in this case. Is the gentleman saying that we should disregard the judge's decision based on the Constitution?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I will yield at the end of my presentation. If the other side is going [[Page H 9615]] to interrupt me every time I get into the middle of a sentence, then I am going to do the same with them.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I am offering this amendment to restrict the effect of this bill to the State of California, rather than to the entire United States, because the bill is being offered to address a specific problem. This is a terrible bill, my colleagues. If we have a terrible bill, it seems to me that the least we ought to try to do is limit it to as small an area as we can possibly limit it to. This bill comes forward simply because some of the folks in California do not like the results of a lawsuit that was filed and a court decision that was entered in California which declared the results of a referendum unconstitutional under the Federal Constitution of the United States. There is not but one other instance, one instance in the law now where a three-judge panel of judges is required, and that is in the area of voting rights. The effect of this bill would be to create a three-judge panel every time a constitutional issue was raised where a referendum has been conducted in a State. It makes no sense to do that. We had a law on the books from approximately 1945 to 1976 which required three-judge panels. It was taken off of the books, repealed because the judiciary, lawyers, and the general public all concluded that it was the worst part of the judicial system that existed at that time. Now we are being called upon simply because some of the representatives in California do not like the results of a lawsuit to put that law back on the books to apply to every State in the Union. The effect of this bill would be to require three judges to decide a case when one judge has been deciding it in the past. Once we start doing it in referendum cases, then I am not sure how we restrict it. My colleagues, this is a bad, bad bill. It is bad, bad public policy. We should be serious about it if we are interested in saving taxpayers money. We have been here trying to balance the budget, we say. Yet, in this one instance to play politics with one person from California, we are getting ready to add substantial cost to the judiciary and make a public policy decision that makes absolutely no sense. A State court judge held the referendum in this case unconstitutional. A Federal court judge held the referendum and the results of that referendum unconstitutional. It would not have mattered who decided this case; the issue on that referendum was unconstitutional. To go back and try to address that by changing the process makes no sense. To say that we are going to convene three Federal judges to come together in one location, when we have the substantial backlog in our courts that we have, every time we got some referendum that somebody does not like the results of, we have got to convene three Federal judges, take up their time, take up their clerk's time, expose the taxpayers to this additional expense, I submit to my colleagues is very, very, very bad public policy. I understand why the gentleman from California is offering this. It is good politics at home. He can go home tomorrow and say, look, I got something for the State of California and I can deliver. I am a Member of Congress now. But it is our responsibility as Members of this body to set good public policy. I want to say, this amendment would limit this abomination of a bill to the State of California.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I want to respond to the chairman that the last time I checked the Constitution, there is nothing in the Constitution that guarantees anybody a three-judge panel. There is something that talks about habeas corpus and the writ of habeas corpus.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, the seniors in our country are about to experience what we call in North Carolina a double hit. Not only are the Republicans cutting Medicare by $270 billion, they are cutting Medicaid right behind it $182 billion. Medicare is for the elderly, Medicaid is for the poor, but 69 percent of the money in Medicaid goes to the elderly also, even though they represent only 28 percent of the people who are served. Sixty-nine percent. A double hit they will be taking. Medicare cuts on the one hand, Medicaid cuts on the other hand. It is un-American to be mean to our poor and our elderly and we should stop it right now before we get too far down the line.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, and I thank him for bringing this important issue to the attention of the Members of this body and to the American people. Mr. Speaker, listen. What is that sound I hear? I think it is the deafening sound of silence that we always hear when we detect a double standard, and nobody, nobody wants to own up to it. There is this deafening sound of silence about this Viacom deal because we knew there was an opportunity, we know there was an opportunity, and we know that an opportunity has been missed, and we know that a double standard has been set, and we know there is no justification for it except something is going on in our country that says anything that has any race notion to it, any equalization, any preference notion to it, any opportunity to equalize the playing field is going to get some kind of special scrutiny. Well, we remember the Viacom deal last February. It was a deal that fell through because Republicans in this House rallied to repeal the minority tax certificate program. That program permitted owners of broadcast and cable facilities to avoid capital gains taxes on the sale of broadcast or cable facilities to minorities. Had this program not been repealed an African-American business person would have become a serious player in the telecommunications industry. The program was designed to help minorities get some minimal foothold in the telecommunications industry. We remember the deal, and we remember how outraged the Republicans were that a multimillion dollar corporation was going to get a tax break, a multimillion dollar majority corporation was going to get a tax break, they were outraged because they were going to get that tax break by selling a communications interest to a minority. We remember how Americans were whipped into a frenzy over this issue because they were told that a huge corporation would avoid paying taxes for selling its holdings just because it was selling those holdings to a minority member who didn't need affirmative action anyway. Well, if we had just done away with that program and gone on and forgotten about it, maybe the American people would understand and be satisfied, but that is not what happened. What goes around tends to come back around, and so it did. Viacom never gave up on the notion, the majority company never gave up on the notion of tax avoidance, and they went out and they struck another deal with what happened to be another majority communications company called TCI. That deal avoids all taxation just like the other deal that was so objectionable. And what do we hear? What have we heard from our Republican colleagues in this very body? Where are you? We hear the deafening sound of silence. Not a word. Well, what are we to make of this? Is this a double standard? It's OK to avoid taxation. Viacom can avoid taxation as long as it is selling its communications interests to another majority company, but it is not OK to avoid taxation if it is selling its interest to a minority communications interest. What's the deal? What is it that we are saying? Is it OK for TCI and Viacom to avoid taxation through complex business deals? Is that OK? Is that affirmative action of some kind for those majority companies? It is certainly an advantage that our Government has delivered to them to facilitate this deal and allow it to happen. It is affirmative action when we provide a special consideration to our veterans because they have served our country? Is that an acceptable affirmative action? Is it affirmative action when we say to major corporations that we will provide a tax credit for you to encourage you to do something good for our communities, to keep our air clean? Well, I am not sure I understand the distinction between those kind of tax credits and savings and affirmative actions that benefit the majority community and the affirmative actions that you say are unacceptable when they benefit the minority community. This entire Viacom episode really demonstrates once again as clearly as it can be demonstrated that we have gotten way out of whack when it comes to dealing with minority preferences and things that benefits minorities in this country. We cannot sit still for that to happen. But what happens when the same kind of scenario plays out and benefits those who already have advantages? I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, it is a double standard, and we know what happens when there is a double standard and there is no, no, no justification for it. [[Page H 8519]] We know what happens in this body, and we see it time after time after time after time. We hear it time after time after time. We hear that deafening sound of silence from our colleagues. We have got to stand up and expose these things when they are inequities, and I commend my colleague from California for bringing this opportunity for us to make the statement in the interest of fairness because we will come back here after the break in this body, and I am sure we will not hear that deafening sound of silence from our colleagues come time to talk about affirmative action and things that may have some benefit to the minority community, but we certainly hear that deafening sound today. I yield back to the gentleman from California and thank him again for sponsoring this special order today.